On “having” children: should we be counting that as birth, raising, what you think of as “yours,” something else? I am thinking of sperm donors, surrogate mothers, children given up for adoption, and adoptive parents. If I am the biological parent of X offspring and raise Y of them, should I be reporting X or X-Y? And if I have step/adopted/foster children, +Z? “Raise” might be bad too, as there are people who have (biological or not) children they think of as “theirs” without custody or visitation.
The count might be fuzzier than intended. I would expect upward bias.
Interesting you don’t consider what I thought would be the obvious interpretation of counting Y(+Z) alone, even after you considered adding adopted and foster children, which would, over the population, double-count any choice with the inclusion of X.
On “having” children: should we be counting that as birth, raising, what you think of as “yours,” something else? I am thinking of sperm donors, surrogate mothers, children given up for adoption, and adoptive parents. If I am the biological parent of X offspring and raise Y of them, should I be reporting X or X-Y? And if I have step/adopted/foster children, +Z? “Raise” might be bad too, as there are people who have (biological or not) children they think of as “theirs” without custody or visitation.
The count might be fuzzier than intended. I would expect upward bias.
Interesting you don’t consider what I thought would be the obvious interpretation of counting Y(+Z) alone, even after you considered adding adopted and foster children, which would, over the population, double-count any choice with the inclusion of X.